Good morning. Seven days to go: long enough to worry but not enough time to change course for candidates across America. Here's what's happening today.

Joe Miller, the troubled Republican Senate candidate in Alaska, may see his local government work records released this afternoon if a judge's court order to publish them goes ahead, shedding light on the incident that saw him disciplined.

In the crucial Senate swing seat in West Virginia, Democrat Joe Manchin is pulling ahead in the polls – and comes out with a new, no-holds-barred ad calling his opponent John Raese "crazy".

7.25am ET: Simon Jeffery here. There is a video doing the rounds today of a male Rand Paul supporter stomping on the head of a female MoveOn volunteer who went to protest at last night's Kentucky Senate debate. The race was already bad tempered - Paul refuses to shake his Democratic rival Conway's hand, Conway's ads insinuate Paul isn't a Christian - but this is clearly a lot worse.

The woman, Lauren Valle, appeared to have emerged largely unscathed (save for what she told TV news reporters was "a bit of a headache") but the question is now how this will play for Paul. If you watch the video, you see that it was last night leading local TV news.

7.45am ET: Time for some polls

• A new poll of the Pennsylvania Senate race puts Republican Pat Toomey eight points ahead of the Democrats' Joe Sestak. Taken with yesterday's Rasmussen poll that cut Toomey's lead to four points, and those last week that had Sestak ahead, it would suggest that a) Pennsylvania is volatile but b) Toomey has the edge.

• Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic candidate running for the Senate in Connecticut, is 12 points ahead of former wrestling executive Linda McMohan. That's more or less unchanged from a week ago.

• Republican Rob Portman is 17 points ahead in the Ohio Senate race; in the election for Ohio governor, Republican challenger John Kasich is six points ahead of the Democratic incumbent, Ted Strickland, though that's something of an improvement for Strickland – he was 10 points behind last week.

8.33am ET: Ed Pilkington's pursuit of the Tea Party has taken him to North Carolina's 7th congressional district, where thanks to Tea Party help Ilario Pantano is in contention to take the seat for the Republicans for the first time since 1871.

Charges were later dropped on the grounds of insufficient evidence, though the officer presiding over the hearing said that by desecrating the Iraqi's bodies with his placard he had brought disgrace to the armed forces.

Pantano declined to be drawn on the specifics of his case. "I'm running for Congress. I'm not defending myself for something that happened five years ago," he said.

But what about that placard? "I don't need to explain anything to people. If folk are alarmed, well war is alarming. All of my men that are alive are grateful for my service."

9.05am ET: Not everything can be bad for Democrats, can it? Yes it can: even the weather. Meterologists are predicting rain for many parts of the US on election day and that, the Hill tells us, usually works against the Democrats.

According to Laurel Harbridge, a Northwestern University political science professor, GOP voters are not typically discouraged by rain. "Republicans are helped by bad weather ... it does harm Democratic prospects."

That's a very sad-looking donkey at the top, in case you were wondering.

9.38am ET: An average of $4m has been spent on each congressional seat up for election, according to new figures.

10.41am ET: I'm now handing over to Richard Adams.

11.16am ET: Good morning from Washington, where the weather is the big news as cyclones from the Great Lakes are expected to rampage around the upper mid-west and airports are closed because of the high winds.

On the election trail, the stormy weather is coming from Kentucky, as mentioned below, after some extraordinary footage of a Rand Paul supporter stomping on the neck of a woman protester. "These supporters were not very nice to me," says the women who got trodden on but seems ok otherwise.

Edwards's House seat is the most heavily Republican-leaning district held by a Democrat, but the weakness of his opponent seems to have done the trick (although the Republicans of course say they are so confident of winning that they don't need to advertise there ... overconfidence?).

12.30pm ET: As everyone knows, the most influential current events programme on US television is The View. This morning, panelist Joy Behar gave her considered opinion on a recent campaign ad by Nevada Republican candidate Sharron Angle.

This is the Sharron Angle ad in question – which contains a number of what could be described as "falsehoods" or "lies" – and this is how Professor Behar deconstructed it according to the transcript of this morning's show:

Joy Behar: You know what I'd like to see her do? I'd like to see her do this ad in the south Bronx. Come here, bitch! Come to New York and do it. [Audience applause]

Sherri Shepherd: And we're praying for you. We're praying for you.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck: Even Joy is praying for her.

Behar: I am not praying for her. I'm telling you right now. She's going to Hell.

12.47pm ET: Not that it matters to the outcome – since both leading Alaska senate candidates Joe Miller and Lisa Murkowski are Republicans – but according to this AP story they might not even start counting real votes up there until 18 November, since Murkowski is a write-in candidate:

State election officials say they won't even count names on write-in ballots unless they make up the most votes in the race or the difference in their number and the highest voter getter is less than half a percent. Absentee ballots will be accepted up to 15 days after Election Day, so if the state does count the write-in ballots, it probably won't start until Nov. 18.

Carly learned more than a year and a half ago that she, like millions of women, had breast cancer. After successfully battling cancer, she had reconstructive surgery this summer and remains cancer free today. However, this morning Carly came down with an infection associated with the reconstructive surgery and, as a result, she was admitted to the hospital to receive antibiotics to treat this infection.

The campaign says she is expected to make a full and speedy recovery and will return to the campaign trail "soon" after canceling two events this morning.

1.31pm ET: The most interesting piece of news today (with all due respect to Carly Fiorina's infection) is that Barack Obama plans to venture into Virginia on Friday and campaign for Tom Perriello, the embattled Democrat fighting to hang on in Virginia's fifth congressional district.

Perriello is one of the more vulnerable Democrats out there, and trailing in the polls in a seat that John McCain actually won in 2008 despite the rest of Virginia going to Obama.

1.55pm ET: It's never too soon to talk about the 2012 or 2016 or 2020 presidential elections? Apparently not.

Not long ago Marco Rubio, the Republican senate candidate in Florida, was being talked about in terms of being "the Republican Obama" – and his closing campaign ad released today seems to hint at higher things.

(On the other hand, the last "Republican Obama" was Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, and look how well that turned out?)

2.09pm ET: Leaving a sinking ship, in the manner of a rat. The Biloxi Sun-Herald has a piece on the Republican scapegoating of Nancy Pelosi which includes this gem of a news item about the Democratic congressman Gene Taylor, holder of the increasingly vulnerable fourth congressional district of Mississippi: "Taylor said he voted for Republican John McCain for president".

Oh really? That's very convenient.

2.33pm ET: Poll update – and the update is that there are a lot of polls out there. And they all have basically the same message: the Republicans are ahead in almost all swing seats.

To take one example: the South Dakota at-large congressional seat, where Democrat incumbent Stephanie Herseth Sandlin with 43% trails her Republican opponent Kristi Noem with 45% – basically a tie given the margin of error.

3.02pm ET: It's a bitter battle in Connecticut's close-run Senate contest. CQ Politics blog reports that Planned Parenthood has entered the scene with a mailing to 10,000 independent women voters which describe scenes from World Wrestling Entertainment pro-wrestling events. The Republican candidate Linda McMahon was until recently the chief executive of WWE.

You can see the leaflet here, which mentions the video above and reads in part: "Countless women are punched in the face, thrown through tables, hit with chairs and forced to disrobe as crowds roar. And Linda McMahon says the WWE: 'Is all entertainment.'"

3.30pm ET: This is interesting: Alaska's Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller – the one who has his guards handcuff journalists – has said he will not appeal a court ruling that the Fairbanks North Star Borough must release his employment records today at 4pm, Alaska time.

The records should detail Miller's run-in with his employers over unauthorised use of a workplace computer. Media organizations in Alaska have been seeking Miller's records since earlier this year and sued to get access, which was granted by a judge at the weekend.

4pm ET: More polls out today, and more interesting Senate races this time:

Fiorina simply has not proven to be a formidable candidate. 49% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of her to 38% with a favorable one. It's not impossible to win as a Republican in California, but it is impossible to win as an unpopular Republican.

•West Virginia: Fox/Pulse/Rasmussen has Republican John Raese on 48% and Joe Manchin on 46%. That's a tight one still

4.26pm ET: It turns out the person who stomped on the unlucky MoveOn demonstrator at a Kentucky Senate debate event was a county organiser for Rand Paul's campaign. AP reports:

The volunteer with Rand Paul's Republican US Senate campaign who stepped on the head of a liberal activist and pinned her face to the concrete said Tuesday the scuffle was not as bad as it looked on video and blamed police for not intervening. "I'm sorry that it came to that, and I apologize if it appeared overly forceful, but I was concerned about Rand's safety," Profitt told The Associated Press.

Yes, she looked like a real security threat. Charming.

5pm ET: Let's wrap things up for the night. Only six more days to go until election day. So what did we learn on Tuesday 26 October?

•The key California Senate race appears to be swinging towards safety for the Democrats after a trio of new polls

•Barack Obama will campaign for an embattled Democratic congressman in Virginia on Friday

•Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller will have his local government employment records published later today in Alaska

• Don't get too close to Rand Paul in Kentucky or his campaign organisers might stand on your head